Is it time to ditch the penny?

HappyMJ

karlie88 wrote: »

I bought a bag of sweets from Tesco earlier for 1p...that's enough proof to keep the coppers.

In the whole basket of groceries that would have been rounded either up or down and overall makes little difference. What a lot of people do in Australia from what I remember is put $10.02 of petrol in the car and hand over a $10 note. It's rounded down to $10 so 2c of free petrol.

em_watford

Moneyben wrote: »

Ditch both 1 and 2 pence coins, the way prices have gone up their just not worth the cost to the banks in minting these coins and having to transport them to banks. It will save shops money in not having to bank them. And admit it we all have a pot with copper coins in as they are just a pain to carry round. And when the pot is full and you've lugged them to the bank WOW you've got a couple of quid, not really worth the effort. Some of you might say why not scrap all coins? well the answer....5, 10,20 pence coins still have some value.

We do have stacks of coppers at home, but that's a good thing... it is a fabulous way to teach my 5 yr old about money (and basic maths). Don't ditch these coins!
And a couple of quid might not seem a lot to you - but you should see my little girl's face when she has saved enough to buy a magazine or pocket money toy!

tescobabe69

I dont think the "coin police" will demand you hand them over, if they do I have a few quids worth "they" dont know about.

mindwave

If we lost the penny then every price of everything would be increased by a penny, so not a good idea. Nothing would be 99p any more.

MarkLS12

mindwave wrote: »

If we lost the penny then every price of everything would be increased by a penny.

No it wouldn't, there would be no need for prices to change, as explained earlier in the thread.

If we were to do the same as Canada and get rid of our copper coins our smallest coin would be 5p.

It would make little sense to get rid of the penny and keep the 2p coin.
A 2p coin weighs exactly the same as two pennies, so you are not really saving anything.
If you are going to get rid of just one of the copper coins, it should be the 2p.
Then once the 2p are all gone, issue a new lighter and cheaper to produce 1p coin made of steel.

torbrex

There was no option in the poll for ditching the 2p coin and that is the most logical coin to get rid of, the yanks have used the metric coinage system a lot longer than us and manage quite well without a 2p equivelant.

On the subject of the penny costing more to produce than it is worth, that is down to bad management at the Royal Mint, if they did not keep changing the design of the coin so often then tooling costs would not be so high.
I can understand changing the pound coin design to pervent forgeries flooding the market as the criminals would be able to make a profit on them but if the Mint can't make a profit on a penny then why is a forger going to bother with it?

MarkLS12

torbrex wrote: »

On the subject of the penny costing more to produce than it is worth, that is down to bad management at the Royal Mint,

Actually it's due to inflation and the price of copper going up.

torbrex wrote: »

if they did not keep changing the design of the coin so often then tooling costs would not be so high.

The problem is that copper is becoming more expensive.
The 'new' penny has been changed only a few few times since it was introduced in 1971, the main change was made was in 1992 to reduce the amount of copper in it to make it cheaper.

Krissy306

i do think we should scrap both 1ps and 2ps like, are the government acually concidering this or is it just a pointless poll on peoples views?

morg_monster

But the 1p and 2p coins are now copper-plated steel, there is hardly any copper in it anymore!

tobybowes

Forget the actual coins, at least they exsist.

BAN THE POINTS OF A PENNY LIKE IN FUEL PRICES
139.9p 134.7p 157.8p are all rounded up! Its the most common mis-leading pricing across the country!!